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The Monster of Florence | 
 enlarge | Author: Douglas Preston
Creator: Mario Spezi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $25.99
Buy New: $12.50
You Save: $13.49 (52%)
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Rating:  77 reviews
Sales Rank: 429
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.7 x 1.2
ISBN: 0446581194
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1523
EAN: 9780446581196
ASIN: 0446581194
Publication Date: June 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: When author Douglas Preston moved his family to Florence he never expected he would soon become obsessed and entwined in a horrific crime story whose true-life details rivaled the plots of his own bestselling thrillers. While researching his next book, Preston met Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist who told him about the Monster of Florence, Italy's answer to Jack the Ripper, a terror who stalked lovers' lanes in the Italian countryside. The killer would strike at the most intimate time, leaving mutilated corpses in his bloody wake over a period from 1968 to 1985. One of these crimes had taken place in an olive grove on the property of Preston's new home. That was enough for him to join "Monsterologist" Spezi on a quest to name the killer, or killers, and bring closure to these unsolved crimes. Local theories and accusations flourished: the killer was a cuckolded husband; a local aristocrat; a physician or butcher, someone well-versed with knives; a satanic cult. Thomas Harris even dipped into "Monster" lore for some of Hannibal Lecter's more Grand Guignol moments in Hannibal. Add to this a paranoid police force more concerned with saving face and naming a suspect (any suspect) than with assessing the often conflicting evidence on hand, and an unbelievable twist that finds both authors charged with obstructing justice, with Spezi jailed on suspicion of being the Monster himself. The Monster of Florence is split into two sections: the first half is Spezi's story, with the latter bringing in Preston's updated involvement on the case. Together these two parts create a dark and fascinating descent into a landscape of horror that deserves to be shelved between In Cold Blood and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Product Description
In the nonfiction tradition of John Berendt ("Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil") and Erik Larson ("The Devil in the White City"), New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills surrounding Florence, Italy.
In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy. Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more. This is the true story of their search for--and identification of--the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster Of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide-and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 72 more reviews...
 Stranger than fiction June 10, 2008
Henry W. Wagner (Rockaway, NJ USA)
221 out of 224 found this review helpful
In the annals of crime, the case of the "Monster of Florence" (the name Italian journalist Mario Spezi, one of the co-authors, and one of the key players in the case and this book, gave the killer) is truly one of the strangest. Starting in 1974, and continuing through 1985, seven couples were brutally murdered in the secluded lovers' lanes located in the hills surrounding the city of Florence, Italy. Still unsolved to this day, the crimes captured the horrified attention and imagination of the Italian people, and consumed enormous resources--nearly one hundred thousand men were investigated and more than a dozen arrested during the course of various inquiries into the crimes. Per Douglas Preston's introduction, the investigation "has been like a malignancy, spreading backward in time and outward in space, metastasizing into different cities and swelling into new investigations, with new judges, police, and prosecutors, more suspects, more arrests, and many more lives ruined."
Not merely a recounting of those grisly crimes and endless investigations, The Monster of Florence (hereafter TMOF) is also an engrossing biographical piece, detailing the toll the case took on both its authors, who, in one of the stranger twists in a case replete with strange twists, become the focus of the ongoing police investigation. Thus, in a plot complication worthy of Alfred Hitchcock, the reporters became part of the very story they are covering--after his home is ransacked in a search, Spezi is subsequently arrested, and his collaborator, American crime novelist Preston, is harshly interrogated by the authorities. In a movie, the protagonists would have been able to clear their names by dramatically unmasking the real killer, unearthing a piece of key evidence at the last moment. Real life, however, proves to a bit more complicated, and certainly more bizarre.
The back cover copy of the advance reading copy of TMOF compares it to John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City. The comparison is apt, but only to a point, as both these non-fiction works feel more like novels. TMOF, on the other hand, feels more like the product of journalists than novelists (certainly not surprising, given the backgrounds of its respective creators), calling to mind books like Jimmy Breslin's outstanding .44, or Vincent Bugliosi's memorable Helter Skelter. That's not to say it's any less gripping because of that tendency; in fact, in might have made the book all the more immediate and enthralling, because, in this instance, the strange facts in this case alone are enough to capture and hold any reader's attention.
An extraordinary indictment of the Italian legal system July 11, 2008
J. Fuchs (Los Angeles, CA United States)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
When Douglas Preston moved his family to the outskirts of Florence in 2000, he thought he was just going to enjoy la dolce vita and write a mystery novel. What he found was both more interesting and scarier than any story he could have come up with on his own. As he was interviewing a journalist named Mario Spezi who was an expert on the Italian legal system, Spezi casually mentioned that just outside the villa Preston and his family had rented, was the site of one of the most gruesome murders in Florentine history. There, in 1983, the famed Monster of Florence had taken the lives of two of his victims.
Slowly Preston found himself getting pulled into the mystery of the Monster of Florence, who had between the years of 1974 and 1985 killed at least 7 couples as they made love in various out-of-the-way places in the Tuscan hills. Various men had been tried and convicted of the crimes, but the cases did not offer compelling proof and Spezi believed that the killer or killers were still free. Preston joined Spezi in trying to find the real killer, but what neither of them could have known was that they themselves were going to be charged crimes in connection with the case. In Italy, important magistrates don't appreciate being shown up by the press and Preston and Spezi showed up the flaws in the Monster investigation. What starts out as a murder mystery soon turns to much much more -- a chilling indictment of the Italian legal system and the lack of freedom of the press in Italy.
Preston and Spezi bring the people and places involved to life. The writing is crisp, the story well laid out and the implications of the abuse of government and suppression of a free press in a first world country shocking and important. So... Come for the monster, come for Florence, but stay for the journalists, who are much more interesting in the end.
Best thing about this book: the insight into the Italian people & culture June 20, 2008
Roy Speed (Bethel, CT United States)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
I'll try not to repeat here what others have written.
The account of the murders and Spezi's decades-long investigation is quite compelling, but by far the most surprising thing to me was the insight the book offers into Italy and the Italians. In this book you see a dramatic demonstration of how British and American views of Tuscany (A Room With a View, Under the Tuscan Sun, etc., etc.) are mainly about Brits and Americans frolicking through lovely towns, villages, and sunny hillsides. Such books and movies may be superficially charming, but they don't reveal the first thing about the Italians.
What Preston and Spezi have accomplished here is quite remarkable. This book falls solidly within the "true crime" genre, but what you get is so much greater. The story proceeds with a steady accumulation of events, facts, and clues. But the deeper you get into the book, the more this story is punctuated by insights by articulate, dispassionate Italians -- observers of their own people, their fallibility, gullibility, dishonesty, dark motives, and on and on. -- The cumulative effect is revelatory, difficult to convey in a brief review.
If you read this book, by the end you will be so grateful that you live in a country with a bill of rights, a truly free press, and a court system that, however flawed, works better than most.
To sum up: This book offers a terrific account of some horrifying murders, but also a stunning peek under the hood of Italy today. -- I, for one, had no idea.
Highly recommended.
An Investigative Comedy of Errors August 5, 2008
Brett Benner (Los Angeles, CA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
What makes the story of a serial killer loose in the beautiful Tuscan countryside so thrilling is that it's all true. Writer Douglas Preston moved his family to Italy while doing research for a book. While there, he is put in contact with Mario Spezi, a journalist who tells him the story of The Monster of Florence, a serial killer who preys on young couples. But what becomes even more frightening than this homicidal madman, is the utter travesty that takes place in the hands of the Italian police and the judicial system. Crime scenes botched, lives ruined over false accusations, and allegations of Satanic cults, while the true killer, Spezi and Preston believe, still walks free. It's a baffling and unbelievable story.
A gripping and disturbing read June 16, 2008
Robert Busko (Waynesville, NC USA)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
Beginning in 1974 and continuing to 1985 a series of gruesome murders took place near Florence, Italy. Usually murdering the young men first, the killer would then kill the young women at his leisure and then mutilate the body. Though the police sought to catch the Monster of Florence, the name given to the killer, they made little head way. Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist, covered the crimes and was witness to the police incompetence surrounding the murder investigation.
In 2000 American author Douglas Preston moved himself and his family to a small 14th century farm house literally across the road from an ancient olive grove near Florence. Little did they know the background of that charming olive grove. Settling themselves into the local life, the Preston family thought they'd found the ultimate happiness; after all, it had been their shared dream of moving to Italy. That is, until Douglas Preston became involved with Mario Spezi and the murder investigation of the Monster of Florence. On their own, Spezi and Preston pursued their own line of investigation ultimately leading to a confrontation with a person they suspected of the murders. Without giving away to bank, in the end both Preston and Spezi become suspects in the killings; Spezi is suspected of being the killer, and Preston with aiding and abetting. Preston was told in a pretty direct manner to get out of town or else. Spezi wasn't that lucky.
The Monster of Florence has everything you could ask for in a nonfiction murder story. Its all here. The Monster of Florence is also a window into the Italian police processes and very enlightening.
I highly recommend.
Peace always.
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